The Anthropology and Environment Society (AES) of the American Anthropological Association is pleased to announce the 2019 Rappaport Student Prize competition. To apply, interested graduate students are invited to submit an abstract by 18 March 2019 of a paper that you plan to develop into a publication. The abstract should present a summary of the entire paper, including a statement of the problem being investigated, methods undertaken, the results of the study, the theoretical context in which it is being evaluated, and the significance of the research. The abstract should not exceed 500 words; abstracts that exceed this word limit will not be reviewed.

All submitted abstracts will be reviewed by an expert panel consisting of officers of AES plus distinguished outside members, focusing on the originality of the research and analysis as well as the contribution to the field of environmental anthropology, and a maximum of five (5) will be selected for participation in the Rappaport prize panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, to be held this year November 20-24, 2019 in Vancouver, Canada.

The five semi-finalists will be invited to develop an article-length paper based on their abstracts, not exceeding a maximum of 8,000 words, including notes and bibliography, to be submitted to the AES before October 1, 2019. All five semi-finalists will receive partial support for travel to the AAA meetings, where they will be expected to present their papers during the Rappaport Prize panel and participate in the panel discussion. These five papers will be reviewed by the same AES expert panel, judged for their originality, contribution to the field, and writing style appropriate to a journal manuscript for submission, and one will be selected for the Rappaport Student Prize, which consists of a $1000 cash award, to be announced at the AES Business Meeting which will be held during the AAA meetings.

The Rappaport Prize and Panel is part of an effort to improve the mentoring process for graduate students as they pursue AES related careers. Participating provides an opportunity for students to receive constructive feedback on their work by junior and senior scholars in the AES community. In addition to the feedback received during the panel presentations, one panel judge will be assigned to each semi-finalist, to provide detailed feedback and guidance on publication of their papers.

The deadline for the initial paper abstracts is 18 March 2019, to be e-mailed to the organizer of this year’s competition, Keri Brondo ([email protected]).

Please find this year’s Anthropology and Environment Society (A&E) call for papers below. Lizzy Hare and I are eager to work with you all in creating an exciting A&E program for the AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or ideas.

All the best,

Bri Farber

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Dear Colleagues,

The Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) will convene in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on November 20 – 24, 2019 with the theme: Changing Climates: Struggle, Collaboration, and Justice//Changer d’air: Lutte, collaboration et justice. In light of conversations happening in San José during devastating impacts of wildfire last year, the 2019 theme allows us to build and expand upon these vital discussions together. As Program co-Chairs, we encourage you to consider selecting A&E to review your conference submissions. Below, you will find information to help you prepare for the meeting, including links to details on possible session types and the conference registration portal.

DATES: February 13th marks the opening for abstract submissions for all proposal types. Submissions must be started beforeApril 5th, 3 PM EST.The deadline for all submissions to the AAA website is 3 PM EST on Monday, April 10, 2019.

SESSION TYPES: AAA leadership is committed to supporting a variety of session types this year. There’s always a place for conventional paper panels, but there’s also space for creatively and strategically matching content to medium in the form of:

· Poster panels

· Roundtables

· Mentoring events

· Retrospective sessions (intended to highlight career contributions of leading scholars)

· “Flash” (or rapid fire, 5 minute) presentations

· Installations (“meant to disrupt who and what we tend to see” at the Annual Meeting)

We are also open to proposals for well-planned and -executed virtual sessions. Given this year’s thematic foci, virtual sessions provide an opportunity to include our collaborators–those who we learn from, who are learning from us, and who we work with–in an accessible way.

Last year, we had a dynamic set of presentations experimenting with a flash-style format, giving brief and brilliant insight into over a dozen exciting projects ranging from poor air quality’s impact on people experiencing homelessness to increases in lightning as a result of climate change to shifts in human and wildlife interactions.

In short, session organizers have one hour and forty-five minutes to work with, and there’s a lot A&E members can do to imaginatively maximize that time. Bring on your ideas, and we’ll do our best to support you.

Again, please check out the link above for important details about the various session types. We provide below a few notes about a) organized sessions vs. individual papers, b) posters, and c) invited sessions. Please note that that double sessions have been eliminated.

Organized volunteered sessions vs. individually volunteered papers: If you plan to present your work at the AAA, we encourage you to either organize or co-organize a session yourself or seek out others who are organizing one that relates to your research. (This listserv is a great forum for this). While we do our best to organize individually submitted “volunteered” abstracts into sessions based on common themes, organized sessions tend to be more synergistic and cohesive. Organized sessions provide excellent opportunities for more collaborative and focused discussion and scholarly exchange. These panels also tend to have a greater success in being accepted, and receive better time slots in the program.

Posters: In a continued effort to encourage creative submissions, we urge you to (re)consider possibilities within the poster session format. The poster session is a great way to have more direct engagement and discussion with colleagues. In order to encourage poster submissions in 2019, the A&E Board will honor our best poster with the opportunity to feature an electronic copy of the poster on our section website.

Invited Sessions: Invited Sessions are meant to present cutting-edge research and/or issues of interest to our entire section. Please note that A&E considers all sessions submitted to our section for invited status. However, if you have questions about invited status or would like to draw our attention to your submission as a strong candidate for invited status, we encourage you to email us. Our section can usually sponsor two Invited Sessions, or more by partnering with other sections. In 2018, A&E invited six excellent sessions, all of which were co-sponsored with other sections. There is a common deadline for general submissions and for panels seeking invited status.

PARTICIPATION RULES AND POLICIES: Before you make your plans, please see the Annual Meeting Participation Rules and Policies. Note that meeting participation is limited to AAA members (with some exceptions). Also, please note the One-Plus-One rule which mandates that participants may only: (1) present one paper/poster, or serve as a participant on a roundtable or installation and (2) accept no more than one discussant role elsewhere on the program. An individual may serve as organizer or chair of an unlimited number of sessions. This rule is strictly enforced by the AAA Program Committee.

SUBMISSION PORTAL: Please remember that the AAA requires all participants to submit abstracts and proposals using the online submission portal.

In upcoming weeks, keep an eye out for related announcements, including calls for the Rappaport Student Prize competition and the Next Generation Award (to support meeting attendance by contingent faculty).

In the meantime, visit the AAA website for more information about attending the meeting and feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the A&E review process.

Patrick F. Nason, Columbia University, for “This is not a Goldmine: Conservation, and the Politics of Recruitment in the Deep Bismarck Sea”

Abstract: From the bottom of the Bismarck Sea in Papua New Guinea rise two volcanic peaks. The smaller of the two, known as Suzette, is the proposed site of world’s first deep seabed mine. The larger peak, South Su, has been reserved by the mining company as a “natural conservation unit” to offset the impending destruction of its smaller neighbor. This paper examines the multiple forces involved in marking one mountain for mining, the other for mitigation, and the combined Solwara 1 project as a form of sustainable development. I begin with an explication of the term recruitment as it is deployed by biological oceanographers to describe a process of colonization of one seamount by current-borne animals from elsewhere. Next, I draw on ethnographic and archival research conducted in Papua New Guinea (PNG) between 2015 and 2017 to describe a complex act of recruitment involving scientists, mining company officials, and the larvae of a newly-discovered deepwater snail known as Ifremeria nautilei. I argue that the recruitment of this unique animal’s life history by scientists has itself become the epistemic ground of a public assertion by the mining company that Solwara 1 is not a goldmine, but is rather an experiment in making development sustainable. What has emerged is a seemingly apolitical project—one that has become difficult to confront through either an ethically or aesthetically-driven environmentalist resistance. However, a closer examination of the politics of recruitment associated with Solwara 1 reveals a symbiotic moment of capitalism and conservation, one in which a particular but universalized vision of the human future is grounded on speculations of how a humble snail moves from one mountain to the next. (275 words)

The 2018 Rappaport Panelists were:

Brianna Farber, University of South Carolina, “Pollution Made by Nature: The Circulation of Nitrate Knowledge in Iowa Agriculture and Conservation”

(4-0520) The Bogus and the Bona-Fide: Synthetic Natures, Authentic Materials, and the Blurred Boundaries of the Real [Invited Oral Presentation sponsored by Anthropology and Environment Society and Society for Humanistic Anthropology]

Friday, 2:00 pm

(4-0780) Breeding Cultures: Analyzing Species in Motion [Invited Oral Presentation sponsored by Anthropology and Environment Society and Culture and Agriculture]

Saturday, 10:15 am

(5-0325) Anthropocentrism and its Discontents: Emergent Ecologies, Embodied Environments and the Challenge of Deep Humanism [Invited Oral Presentation sponsored by Anthropology and Environment Society and Society for Humanistic Anthropology]

Saturday, 4:15 pm

(5-1090) Racial Capitalism and the Environment [Invited Oral Presentation sponsored by Anthropology and Environment Society and Society for the Anthropology of North America]

Sunday, 8:00 am

(6-0120) Plantationocene: The Banality of Iowa [Invited Oral Presentation sponsored by Anthropology and Environment Society and Central States Anthropological Society]

(4-0410) Horizons of Extinction: Time and politics on the edge of environmental collapse

(4-0520) The Bogus and the Bona-Fide: Synthetic Natures, Authentic Materials, and the Blurred Boundaries of the Real [Invited Oral Presentation sponsored by Anthropology and Environment Society and Society for Humanistic Anthropology]

The American Anthropological Association released its Policy on Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault (PDF) in an effort to set standards of responsible professional conduct for AAA members and to call for continuing awareness and education, as well as institutional and cultural change.

As a scholarly and professional association, AAA has zero tolerance for sexual harassment in academic, professional, fieldwork, conferences, or any other settings where its members work. Any behavior that contributes to a hostile work climate or constitutes an unwanted sexual advance is a serious violation of professional responsibilities, and should be regarded and treated as such by all anthropologists.

AAA’s Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Policy provides guidelines for appropriate professional behavior. It elaborates on one specific element of AAA’s Principles of Professional Responsibility, which is intended to cover all professional behavior of AAA members, staff, volunteers, contractors, exhibitors, and sponsors. The Policy also applies to any non-member who participates in a AAA-sponsored program or activity, as well as all settings where anthropologists conduct professional business.

While AAA does not grant itself the authority to adjudicate cases involving incidents outside the context of AAA-sponsored activities and events, the Policy outlines a more general expectation of bystander interventions, and affirms AAA’s commitment to provide additional education and cultivate awareness on how to achieve cultural and institutional changes to address this issue. This includes all professional interactions within the research community, in academic and professional institutions, and with members of the public.

Starting October 1st, AAA Ombudspeople will be the organization’s primary resource and point of contact for AAA members regarding concerns about sexual harassment. They will be responsible for receiving complaints of sexual harassment in the context of AAA settings and activities, and, where possible, serve as a resource to members regarding such complaints.

AAA particularly noted that while sexual harassment and sexual assault can occur in its members’ regular work or study setting, field settings are particularly potentially problematic spaces where sexual assault or sexual harassment may occur. As such, these spaces merit particular attention and protocols to mitigate potential abuse.

While the Policy’s primary audience is members of the American Anthropological Association, AAA encourages its application in other interdisciplinary settings where it may be useful.